Founders
01Who we are
Co-Founder
Working at the intersection of entrepreneurship, sustainability, waste management and social impact, with a focus on building practical solutions for a more circular economy.
Co-Founder
An advocate, working on the part of the circular economy that is about people — the rights, recognition and livelihoods of those who already collect, sort and recover material.
02Our story
We studied the same three subjects — accounts, sociology and law — and then started a waste company. RecyclingBazar was founded in 2017, collecting recyclable material from institutions and businesses and getting it to people who could actually use it. It is unglamorous work, and it teaches you quickly that waste management is not a collection problem. Collection, segregation, logistics, end markets, data, labour and policy all have to hold at once, and a system fails at whichever one of them is weakest.
The work produced the same questions over and over. Why does segregation hold in one ward and collapse in the next? What happens to the income of the people already recovering material when a system is formalised around them? Why do two schemes that look identical on paper produce completely different results a year later?
The three subjects turned out to be the right three, though not in the way a prospectus would have put it. Accounts asks who pays for this once the launch is over. Sociology asks who handles the material and what it costs them socially to do it. Law asks who holds the right to collect, and what happens when the answer changes. A waste system that fails usually fails on one of those three rather than on the machinery.
Those questions have been answered, partially and in particular places, by people who built working systems elsewhere. Almost none of that is written down in a form useful to somebody making a decision in an Indian city, and almost none of it records the failures. Circular Journey is the attempt to go and ask them directly, write down what they say including the parts that did not work, and test the most promising ideas under Indian conditions rather than assuming they transfer.
03Education and perspective
Graduate degree
Whether a system can pay for itself. Cost, margin and who actually carries them is how a case study gets past the launch photographs to the question that decides everything: is this still running in five years, and on whose money? A model that works only while it is subsidised is a pilot, not a solution.
Master of Arts
Waste is usually discussed as a materials problem and measured in tonnes. Sociology asks what the tonnage hides: who handles the material, how society regards them, why the work carries stigma, and who captures the value recovered from what other people discard.
LLB
A circular economy needs more than recycling infrastructure. Who holds the right to collect? Who is recognised as a worker? Who is accountable when a system fails, and what recourse does anyone have? Law is where those questions get answered, or ignored.
Both founders hold all three. It is stated once because it is the same for both, and because the useful distinction between us is not what we studied.
Vivek Kumar
The collection and recovery operation, the digital platforms behind both ventures, and the field research programme — where it goes, what it asks each system, and how the findings are published. The questions the research framework asks came out of running the operation, which is why it concentrates on operating cost, informal-sector livelihoods and what happens after the launch rather than on technology.
Prashant Gautam
Practising as an advocate, and carrying that into the research: legal awareness and access to justice for waste collectors, and the questions of recognition, entitlement and accountability that a purely technical account of a waste system leaves out. It is the reason the research framework treats the informal sector as the incumbent system rather than as a problem to be tidied away.
04Entrepreneurial journey
First venture
RecyclingBazar is founded, working on organised collection and recovery of recyclable material from institutions and businesses. The operational experience behind everything that follows starts here.
National platforms
Participation in a national programme for young people working on public problems, held during the National Youth Festival — the first time the work was presented outside the states it had been operating in.
Circular Journey
Circular Journey is established as an independent research and knowledge-exchange initiative, separate from both ventures, and published openly. No field research yet: this is the year the framework, the evidence rules and the network are built.
Ahead
The first missions, to Southeast Asia. Nothing has been studied yet, and every country page currently says so.
05Our ventures
Turning discarded material back into supply
A waste management and resource-recovery venture working on organised collection of recyclable material from institutions, businesses and other bulk generators, and moving it to recyclers who can process it.
What it taught
It established the thing the research is built on: waste management is not a collection problem. Collection, segregation, logistics, end markets, data, labour, policy and technology all have to hold at once, and a system fails at whichever one of them is weakest — usually not the one being funded.
Making growing things easier to start
An online platform for gardening products and supplies, aimed at making it easier for households and communities to grow and maintain green space.
What it taught
The counterweight to the recycling work. Sustainability is not only about what people stop doing; a good deal of it is about what they choose to start. Both ventures turn out to depend on the same thing, which is whether the everyday version of the behaviour is convenient enough to persist.
06Areas of work
07Recognition and milestones
District Administration, Buxar
Issued to both founders by the district administration in Buxar, Bihar. A local acknowledgement of the business, not an endorsement of Circular Journey.
Awarded for the business
Vivek Kumar and Prashant Gautam
National Youth Festival 2025
A national gathering of young people working on public problems, held as part of the National Youth Festival.
Invited as a Youth Icon
Vivek Kumar
School of Ultimate Leadership
A leadership programme convening young people around public issues and institution building.
Selected delegate, one of 200 from across India
Vivek Kumar
Government of Bihar
State-level startup recognition for the recycling venture.
Recognised startup
Vivek Kumar and Prashant Gautam
Government of Jharkhand
State-level startup recognition for the recycling venture.
Recognised startup
Vivek Kumar and Prashant Gautam
Government of India
Recognition of RecyclingBazar under the national startup programme. Recognition is a registration status, not an endorsement of the company or of Circular Journey.
Recognised startup
Vivek Kumar and Prashant Gautam
These are organizations RecyclingBazar has provided waste management services to. They are past commercial engagements of a separate company — not partners, clients, sponsors or endorsers of Circular Journey, and their appearance here implies no affiliation with or approval of this research. None has been asked to endorse it.
SJVN Limited, formerly Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam Limited
Central public sector enterprise · Ministry of Power, Government of India
A joint venture of the Government of India and the Government of Himachal Pradesh.
Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited
Central public sector enterprise · Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Government of India
Work at: Ara plant, Bihar
Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited
Central public sector enterprise · Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Government of India
Statutory body and public sector enterprise · Ministry of Civil Aviation, Government of India
Constituted under the Airports Authority of India Act, 1994.
Work at: Patna Airport
Government department · Ministry of Communications, Government of India
Urban local body · Government of Bihar
Constituted under the Bihar Municipal Act, 2007. The municipal authority responsible for solid waste management in the city.
Indian Institute of Technology Patna
Institute of National Importance · Ministry of Education, Government of India
Established by Act of Parliament in 2008.
Centre for Development of Advanced Computing
Autonomous scientific society · Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India
A research and development organisation in advanced computing and electronics, established in 1988.
Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services Limited
Non-banking financial company
Private sector. Registered with the Reserve Bank of India as a non-banking financial company, and part of the Mahindra Group.
Maharatna, Navratna and Miniratna are categories conferred on central public sector enterprises by the Department of Public Enterprises, Government of India. They are revised over time, so the year each was conferred is given. Descriptions were checked in September 2026.
08What is not here yet
Speaking and knowledge sharing
No talk, workshop or institutional session has been given under Circular Journey. The 2025 programmes above were attended, not spoken at, and are listed as participation for that reason.
Media and public engagement
No press coverage of Circular Journey has been published. When there is some, it will be listed here with the publication, the date and a working link to the original — not as a logo wall.
Credentials and documentation
Certificates and recognition letters will be shown as document previews once they are collected. Identity documents — Aadhaar, PAN, passport, bank details, personal addresses and phone numbers — will never appear here.
Impact numbers
There are no verified impact figures for Circular Journey, because no field research has happened yet. Rather than counting years or listing round numbers, the measured figures live on the impact dashboard, where each one carries its source, its methodology and its date.
09What we believe
Most failed waste projects were solutions looking for a site. The research spends its time on how a system actually runs — who collects, what it costs, where material goes, who is paid — before it has an opinion about what should change.
A body of case studies with no failures in it is not a body of evidence. Every case study on this site has a limitations section and a what-did-not-work section, and they are not optional.
The people already recovering material are the incumbent system, not an obstacle to it. Any proposal that improves measurement while removing their income is not an improvement.
Circular Journey does not travel on the assumption that the answers are abroad. A great deal of what works in Indian waste management was worked out in India, and every mission asks what the country being visited could take from India as well as the reverse.
A country can run an advanced system in one area and have serious problems in another. League tables are the fastest way to draw a confident wrong conclusion, so there are none here.
Every figure on this site carries its source, its methodology and its date. Where the real figure is zero, the page shows zero — including on this one.
10In their words
A problem worth solving is worth understanding from every possible angle.
Vivek KumarCo-Founder, Circular JourneyA sustainable future has to be an inclusive one. Environmental progress cannot be separated from the people who collect, sort and recover materials every day.
Prashant GautamCo-Founder, Circular Journey11Looking ahead
An evidence base on waste and resource systems that is specific enough to act on: what a system cost, who ran it, what it did to the people already doing that work, and what happened after the launch photographs. Published openly, with sources attached, and including the attempts that failed.
Then the part that makes it worth doing: taking the most promising of it back to Indian conditions and testing it properly, rather than assuming a model transfers because it worked somewhere wealthier.
That is a twenty-year piece of work and it is one year old. Nothing has been researched yet, the first missions are in 2027, and every page on this site that has no findings on it says so.
12Connect